Killed two in the past two years for New Mexico Game and Fish. They were depredating on this ranch and a neighbors. I wasn't hunting, it was "destroying" the two animals because they can't be transplanted as some would think. Putting a lion that has been forced to seek it's new territory close to humans, into another lions territory,because all there are so many) will cause a confrontation that is often lethal.
I find a fresh kill, stake it with bailing wire, and wait about twenty yards away, down wind, in the DARK. I set up my Ruger #1, seven mag, with a 3-9 scope, on a pile of milk boxes and focus it on the fresh kill. A lion will come back to a kill every night, between midnight and four AM, until it's consumed. During the day it will lay so close to that kill that if you are standing at the kill talking in a normal tone of voice, it can hear you!
Well, then I put a tiny alarm clock in my parka hood, lay in a lawn chair or the front seat of a pickup,if that's part of the barn yard). I wake up every thiry minutes, put my eye up to the scope and shine a spot light on the kill, then go back to sleep.
They were both lions that typically get into trouble with humans because they can't fight for an exclusive territory. The first was a two year old female that had killed nine sheep in a pen. Here little 80lb body carred a 110 lb sheep over a five foot fence. I shot here thru the heart from about sixty feet with a seven mag. She jumped straight up in the air and fell dead.
The second, last year, was a very old male who had worn down teeth, and had been kicked in the heard by a very large animal. Probably a horse. The fractured scull was just healing and is on my mantel. I shot him in the mouth from fifty feet away with a seven mag. The bullet travel down the entire length of his body. He got up and ran 75 yards into the brush down by a river. I waited a few minutes and went into the deep, thick brush after him with a flash light and a .45 govt. 1911. He was laying half in the river, dead as a wedge.
He's on my wall. He was huge. Game and Fish said he was the biggest they'd ever seen. I have a picture of him hanging from my porch. The top of my hat is about 6'4" off the ground. His nose is at my boot soles and his hind feet stretch a foot over my head!
Anyways, we have so many of them it's incrdible. Last week my neighbors horse was attached by one. Don't know if there's any credibility to my theory, but every two years we get another problem maker that can't find a new territory. That's the same time a mother lion takes to ween her young and kick them out. Two years.
Oh, well. Lot of lion stories after thirty years on horse back hunting in the Rockies with my buddies from NM Game and Fish. Great guys. All wild life biologists.
Jim Ratchford
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